"After Tanner' at Pennsylvania Academy (2nd review)

Works by 39 artists in "After Henry Tanner" demonstrate the variety of artistic expression employed by American artists in the U.S.A. since 1940. These artists happen to be African American, but you could organize a similar exhibition limited to women artists, recent immigrants or white males. Stereotyping is a thing of the past, so let's apply a 21st-Century vision to this exhibition.

On the one hand, Robert Cozzolino, Pennsylvania Academy's modern art curator, has selected the art primarily from the Academy's permanent collection, supplemented by several loans from private collections that span stylistic developments from regionalism to Abstract Expressionism, from pop art to conceptual art, all by African American artists. It's a refreshing reminder to artists of all classifications: You no longer have to go to France (as Henry Tanner did) to make it in the art world. You can stay right here and be recognized for your ability. Of course, Paris might be more fun.

On the other hand, why must Henry O. Tanner and other black artists be confined to Black History Month? What is the point, really, of categorizing art or artists according to skin color?

Among the 57 drawings, paintings and prints and one bronze sculpture are glorious, unforgettable art works that seem to define life for all of us. Resurrection (1966), by Alma Thomas, personifies light as a mystical element. It makes no reference to places or people. Instead, this acrylic painting of color wheel squares on canvas recedes into the source of all light and takes us there.

Heartbreaking simplicity

Kara Walker, born in 1969, is represented by Cotton, an etching and aquatint that is heartbreaking in its simplicity of statement: rows of cotton ready to be harvested with the black silhouette of a female figure bent over almost double above the fleecy rows.